Goodbye John Kerry, we won't miss you

John Kerry just couldn't resist.

Even though his pubic career is about to end--even though the Israeli-Palestinian "peace process" is long dead--even though he has absolutely nothing to gain from it--the 73 year-old Kerry just could not resist unleashing one final blast at Israel.

Kerry's disingenuous and mean-spirited attack on Israel at the Saban Forum on Sunday served as a powerful reminder of how good it is that he is about to leave office--and how dangerous for Israel it would have been if he had remained as secretary of state.

Kerry said he finds it "profoundly disturbing" that many members of the Israel cabinet think a Palestinian state isn't such a great idea. Kerry acts as if Palestinian statehood has been an enshrined part of U.S. policy since time immemorial. In fact, only two presidents have endorsed Palestinian statehood; it has been part of U.S. foreign policy for only a very brief time. Future presidents have every right to disagree with the wisdom of that proposal. And certainly Israeli cabinet members have even more of a right to question its wisdom.

  

Israelis are sick and tired of Kerry's hypocritical lecturing. He never says a word about the massive illegal Palestinian construction in the territories.

"There will be no advance and no separate peace with the Arab world without the Palestinian process and Palestinian peace," Kerry absurdly declared. Apparently he has forgotten that Israel already has separate peace treaties with two of the four neighboring Arab states, Egypt and Jordan. Israel does not need a peace treaty with Lebanon, and Israel has nothing to gain from a peace treaty with Syria, since Syria is no longer a functioning state. So what "peace with the Arab world" is Kerry blabbering about? Does Israel really need the recognition of Morocco or Qatar?

. . . .

Kerry will be remembered as a secretary of state who appeased Palestinian terrorists and tyrants, while lecturing and pressuring America's democratic ally. Goodbye, John Kerry. We won't miss you.

Read the full posting at Israel National News

France's push for an international peace conference would be a disaster for Israel

Yitzhak Rabin would have opposed it, too.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has rejected France’s call for an international conference to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But before anyone concludes that only “right-wingers” oppose such a conference, it’s worth recalling that one of the most outspoken critics of the conference idea was Yitzhak Rabin.

The year was 1985, and Rabin was Israel’s minister of defense. Arab leaders had been pushing for the convening of an international peace conference. Rabin and other Israeli leaders were insisting on direct Arab-Israeli negotiations.

The Reagan administration had always supported Israel’s position. But in the spring of 1985, there were media reports that Secretary of State George Shultz was starting to warm up to the idea of an international conference. A worried Rabin flew to the United States for top-level discussions.

Upon his arrival in the U.S., Rabin “made it clear he was concerned about Washington’s apparent weakening on the question of an international conference on the Middle East,” according to AIPAC’s weekly newsletter, Near East Report.
“If they are ready to make peace, let’s negotiate [directly],” Rabin was quoted as saying. “If someone wants to undermine any hope of peace, an international conference and bringing in the Syrians is the best way.”

Rabin said that in his meetings with U.S. officials, “I heard about the ‘international umbrella.’ ” That was a phrase that some administration officials had begun using to try to sugarcoat the bitter pill. The idea was that if the conference took place under the “umbrella” of international auspices, it would somehow increase the chances of achieving peace.

Rabin disagreed. “Whenever anyone mentions umbrella, it reminds me of Chamberlain and Munich,” he declared.

Rabin’s statements were pretty remarkable, when you think about it. He had formerly served as Israel’s ambassador in Washington, so he was keenly sensitive to the need not to anger U.S. officials. Yet he publicly leaked the fact that they were using that deceptive “international umbrella” term. Not only did he leak it, he openly criticized it, right there in Washington.

And he didn’t just criticize it, he used the analogy of Chamberlain selling out to Hitler at Munich. For Rabin to stand in Washington and blast the U.S. administration, even invoking a Nazi analogy, was nothing less than astonishing. It really showed what a terrible threat an international conference (or “umbrella”) poses to Israel.

Such a conference, if held today, would consist of a dozen or more Arab and European countries ganging up on Israel and demanding unilateral concessions to the Palestinians. And given reports that the Obama administration wants to see “progress” on this front before the president leaves office, one must assume the U.S. would side with the Arabs and Europeans.

The purpose of the conference would not be to achieve a genuine peace. How do we know? Because the sponsor, France, already declared earlier this year that if the conference failed to produce a Palestinian state, the French would unilaterally recognize one. That’s the goal – not peace, but a Palestinian state, as quickly as possible, no matter the risks to Israel. Which is why the Palestinian Authority’s inciter-in-chief, Mahmoud Abbas, is energetically supporting the conference idea.

During the past year, France has suffered the worst terrorist attacks in the world since 9/11. One would think the French would understand the folly of appeasing Islamic terrorists and oppose creating what would be an overwhelmingly Muslim Palestinian terrorist state. Yet just the opposite has happened.

Why? Because the French are afraid. They are afraid of angering the Muslim world, afraid of more Muslim terrorism. The French believe that since they are defending themselves against ISIS – French planes are bombing Muslim terrorists in Syria and the French police have been shutting down pro-terror mosques – they have to prove they champion Muslim causes. Supporting Palestinian statehood is France’s way of trying to appease the Muslim world.


The international conference proposal is just another way of throwing Israel under the bus. No wonder Israelis – Likud or Labor, right or left – aren’t too excited about that prospect.

A version of this post appears in the Jewish Press.

When Dentists become Terrorists

One of the biggest lies about terrorism is that terrorists come from poor and underprivileged backgrounds.  Here's my take on the issue as Israeli authorities have arrested three dentists for their role in planning terror attacks.

When Dentists become Terrorists
From the the Jewish Press

The news that three recently captured Palestinian terrorists are dentists has been greeted with chuckles and smirks. It’s not what one expects. A man-bites-dog kind of story. Late-night television talk show hosts will probably get some joke material out of it.

But before laughing and turning the page, it might be worthwhile to take a moment to consider the deadly serious implications of this peculiar story.

For many years, supporters of the Palestinian cause, especially in the mainstream media, have pushed the idea that poverty causes terrorism. That explanation was convenient for several reasons. First, it pins the blame for terrorism on Israel. In other words, if Palestinians resort to violence because they are “desperate” or feel “hopeless,” then Israel’s policies can be blamed for making them feel that way. Second, attributing terrorism to poverty offers an easy solution: give the Palestinians lots of money, and terrorism will stop.

This, in fact, is the entire premise of U.S. aid to the Palestinians. The Palestinian Authority receives $500 million in American taxpayers’ money each year and an astonishing $11.5 billion since 1993. Imagine the better uses that money could have been put to.

Earlier this year, a Washington Post correspondent reported, with surprise, that the latest Palestinian suicide bomber in Jerusalem “doesn’t fit the profile of a desperate Hamas operative” because he was affluent and educated. Abdel Hamid Abu Srour’s uncles “are prosperous merchants…. He did not grow up in a refugee camp. He went on shopping trips to Jordan.”

Relatives described Abu Srour as “a Palestinian preppy, the scion of a well-to-do and well-known clan of eight prosperous brothers, who own and operate a string of furniture outlets and are rich enough to take their young sons for holidays in Jordan and set them up with their own shop selling clothes.”

One uncle, Mahmoud Abu Srour, told the Washington Post reporter: “We are
financially comfortable, you could say very comfortable.” At a family gathering to mourn Abu Srour’s death, his teenage cousins “wore pricey watches, skinny jeans and fancy sneakers.”

The Abu Srour case is reminiscent of the arrest last year of Ayman Kanjou, another stereotype-busting terrorist. If you think Palestinian terrorists must be young, unmarried men who have little to lose, meet Mrs. Kanjou: a middle-aged Israeli Arab woman with five small children, who was caught crossing through Turkey on her way to join the ISIS terrorists in Syria.

She comes from a “respected” family (according to Israeli prosecutor Shunit Nimtzan). She is a college graduate (Al-Azhar University in Cairo), which cannot be said about many Muslim women. And she has a Ph.D.! She had $11,000 in cash with her on her way to join ISIS (doesn’t sound like poverty to me). Surely she was alienated from her family, a rootless malcontent in search of belonging? Not quite: her father, age 74, actually accompanied her on the trip.

In fact, if you go back and look at other major terrorist cases in past decades, you’ll find a similar phenomenon. Recall the 415 Hamas terrorists whom then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin deported to Lebanon in December 1992, after a series of terrorist attacks against Israelis. The Chicago Tribune reported at the time that “many” of the deported terrorists were “businessmen, academics, lawyers, [and] doctors.” Likewise, the co-founder and longtime leader of Hamas, Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi, was a practicing pediatrician. By day, he treated Palestinian children. By night, he organized the murder of Israeli children.

Now we have the terrorist-dentists.

A 36 year-old Palestinian dentist named Dr. Samer Mahmoud al-Halabiyeh was arrested by the Israeli authorities, after he was discovered to be the head of a terrorist cell which carried out the May 10 attack in which one Israeli was seriously wounded. Other members of the cell included his brother, a 42-year-old dentist named Dawoud Alhabiya, and a third dentist, Daganeh Jamil Nabhan, age 36. The three dentists were found to have a stockpile of 56 bombs they were planning to use to murder and maim Israelis.

They’re not desperate teenagers. They had no reason to feel “hopeless.” On the contrary: they were gainfully employed and could look forward to a secure and comfortable future. But, like all Palestinian terrorists, their ideology is more important to them than their personal financial status.

Whether they are teenagers or men in their 30s and 40s; whether they have troubled personal lives or stable, happy personal lives; whether they are unemployed or successfully practicing medicine, all Palestinian terrorists have one thing in common: they try to murder Jews because they want to murder Jews.

Democrats planning to condemn Palestinian Authority?

"Democrats planning to condemn Palestinian Authority?"

In a remarkable turnaround, Democratic Party activists who are known to be pro-Palestinian are calling on their party’s platform committee to condemn the Palestinian Authority (PA).

Or am I misreading something?

Two pro-Palestinian members of Congress, Reps. Keith Ellison of Minnesota and Luis Gutierrez of Illinois, issued their call last week on the blog of J Street. It happens that Ellison and Gutierrez are members of that same platform committee, so it may seem strange that they are taking a public position before the committee has finished its deliberations. But apparently they made up their minds on the Palestinian issue before being appointed to the committee, and no testimony by witnesses or discussions with their fellow committee members will change their minds.

Here’s the key sentence in the Ellison-Gutierrez proposal: “Palestinians struggle under an unjust occupation that deprives them of the rights, opportunities and independence that they deserve.”

Three cheers for Ellison and Gutierrez, for courageously speaking out against the PA’s unjust occupation and denial of rights!

That must be what they mean, right?

After all, 99 percent of the Palestinians live under the rule of the PA (in Judea and Samaria) or Hamas (in Gaza). So if the “occupation” is “unjust,” then it is the PA and Hamas that are committing the injustice.

And if the Palestinians are being “deprived of the rights that they deserve,” then it must be the regimes under which they live that are doing the denying.

The right to democratic elections is surely the most basic of rights. Mahmoud Abbas was elected head of the PA in January 2005 for a four-year term. Yet somehow he is still in office, seven and a half years since his term expired. And Hamas, of course, has not held a democratic election since taking over Gaza nine years ago.

So yes, the honorable members of Congress are absolutely correct. The PA and Hamas are depriving Palestinians of their right to free elections.

The Palestinians are also being deprived of their right to freedom of speech. Najat Abu Baker, a member of the Palestinian parliament, recently hid out in the parliament building for 17 days to avoid being arrested by the PA police. The warrant for arrest was issued because—as the New York Times put it—“Ms. Abu Baker said Mr. Abbas should resign and suggested that there would be money to pay educators if ministers were not so corrupt.”

Another right of which the Palestinians are being deprived—by the PA—is the right to free assembly. Earlier this year, 20,000 Palestinian public school teachers went on strike because they had not been paid (those were the unpaid educators to whom Abu Baker was referring). When some dissidents tried to hold a rally in support of the strikers, “the PA security services set up rings of checkpoints to prevent the teachers from attending the demonstration,” according to Haaretz. Twenty teachers and two school principals who did manage to reach the rally were arrested for doing so.

But don’t take my word for it. Look at the U.S. State Department’s most recent report on human rights around the world. It states that the PA is guilty of “abuse and mistreatment of detainees, poor and overcrowded detention facilities, prolonged detention, and infringements on privacy rights;” “restrictions on freedom of speech, press, and assembly;” “limits on freedom of association and movement;” “discrimination against persons with disabilities” and “discrimination based on sexual orientation and HIV/AIDS status;” and “limits on worker rights,” including “forced labor.”

The list of the PA’s violations of its citizens’ right is so long that one wonders if there are any rights at all that the Palestinians enjoy under the PA occupation.

So, hats off to Reps. Ellison and Gutierrez, for speaking out against the PA’s occupation and mistreatment of the Palestinians. It’s about time somebody raise their voices against this injustice.

That must be what they meant, right?

This column first appeared on JNS.org

Loretta Lynch’s Appalling Response to Terrorism

"Loretta Lynch’s Appalling Response to Terrorism"

US Attorney General Loretta Lynch says the Obama administration has deleted references to Islamic State from the transcript of the Orlando killer’s 911 calls. She says that mentioning the group would “re-victimize” the families of those whom he murdered.

Well, I’ve got news for the attorney general. As the father of a victim of radical Islamic terrorism, it’s not the mention of the terrorist group that re-victimizes me and my family. It’s the ongoing refusal of the Obama administration to name the group to which my daughter’s killers belong that causes us fresh pain every single day.

Alisa was a junior at Brandeis University who was visiting Israel in 1995 when members of Palestinian Islamic Jihad attacked the bus in which she was riding. She and seven other passengers were murdered. Some of the terrorists involved in the attack were subsequently captured or killed. But some of them are still walking free today — and the Obama administration is helping to cover up for them.

Find that hard to believe? Visit www.rewardsforjutsice.net –that’s the US Justice Department website that offers rewards for information leading to the capture of terrorists who have killed Americans abroad. At the bottom of their home page, click on “Middle East and North Africa.” Then go to the right-hand column and choose the item called “Violence in Opposition to the Middle East Peace Negotiations, 1993 – Present.”

Now as you look at this section, keep in mind that since 1993, at least 68 Americans have been murdered, and 94 wounded, by Palestinian terrorists. Some were victimized by Fatah (the group led by the late Yasser Arafat, and currently by Mahmoud Abbas); some by Hamas; and some, including Alisa, by Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

Also keep in mind that in some other sections of the website—sections not involving Palestinian terrorists—the names of victims are mentioned, and the names of the groups that harmed them are mentioned as well.

But notice the difference in the section on the Palestinian attacks.

There, no victims’ names are mentioned. No specific attacks are listed. No organizations — not Fatah, Hamas, or Islamic Jihad — are identified. They are described merely as “terrorist groups and individuals opposed to a negotiated peace agreement.”

The fact that the terrorists were trying to murder Jews or Israelis is not even acknowledged. “The intent of these attacks,” the website claims, “was to disrupt peace negotiations and to modify the attitudes of the leaders engaged in them.”

They were just trying to “modify” leaders’ attitudes! It sounds as if they were just expressing some policy disagreements, and perhaps went a little overboard.

The website’s claim about “disrupting peace negotiations” is not only inadequate — it’s absolutely false. Fatah was never trying to “disrupt” negotiations. Fatah’s leaders — Arafat, then Abbas — were the ones who were conducting the negotiations with Israel. Fatah’s terrorism was a way of trying to increase pressure on Israel to make more concessions within the negotiations. Fatah’s bombings and shootings were part and parcel of Arafat and Abbas’s negotiating strategy.

All of which brings us back to the attorney general and the “re-victimizing” claim.

The omission of the Orlando killer’s Islamic State connection will not spare the families any additional pain. Indeed, it is the very omission which causes them pain, just as the Obama administration’s omission of the names of my daughter’s killers and sponsors causes my family pain.

 The names of the Palestinian killers are omitted because the administration does not want to irritate the Palestinian Authority, which sponsors and shelters the killers. The name of the radical Islamic terrorist group that inspired the Orlando killer is being omitted because the administration wants to play down any connection between terror and Islamic factions. In other words, it’s all politics.

That’s what “re-victimizes us,” Madam Attorney General. Every time we look at that website, we are reminded that your administration is willing to cover up the identity of terrorists in order to further a political or ideological agenda.

This column first appeared on the Algemeiner.com via JNS.ORG

Jewish novelist Michael Chabon rails against fictional ‘occupation’

As a novelist, Michael Chabon has a vivid imagination. One of his novels centers around a world in which there is no state of Israel, only a large Jewish refuge in Alaska. Chabon’s imagination was on full display last week, when he toured Israel and denounced an “occupation” that exists only in his mind.

Together with other American Jewish critics of Israel, Chabon visited Hebron. Afterwards, he told The Forward that “the occupation [is] the most grievous injustice I have ever seen in my life.” Now keep in mind that 80 percent of Hebron is occupied by the Palestinian Authority. But for some reason, Chabon is concerned only about the 20 percent controlled by Israel.

The Israeli military presence in that small part of the city is necessary for one simple reason: Hebron’s Arabs have a long history of massacring their Jewish neighbors. Evidently, that reality does not trouble the visiting novelist. No, somehow the fact that Israeli soldiers protect the city’s handful of Jewish residents is—to quote Chabon—“the most grievous injustice I have ever seen in my life.” That tells me only that Chabon, like many pampered prize-winning novelists, has not seen many injustices.

Chabon’s knowledge of Middle East history is likewise brimming with fiction. He explained to The Forward that he first began criticizing Israel during the 1982 Lebanon War, when he was “reading about the massacres in the refugee camps. I was like, wait, Israel? Is that what they are doing?”

Well, no, Michael, that was not what “they” were doing. It was what the Lebanese Christians were doing. No sane person ever accused Israel of perpetrating massacres in Lebanon; the most Israel was accused of was failing to foresee that the Christians might wreak vengeance on their enemies. Of course, it’s all too easy for a novelist sitting in the comfort and safety of the United States to demand that Israel adhere to absurdly unrealistic standards of behavior.

Chabon also told his interviewer that he visited the Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan, which is inhabited mostly by Arabs. Jews are “illegally taking over houses and these people are fighting for their neighborhood…[American Jewish donations are] going to support the takeover of Silwan.”

You would think a writer would be a little more careful about his choice of words. Chabon’s language reminds me of white racists in the 1970s who were “fighting for their neighborhoods” against African-Americans who were supposedly trying to “take over.” Sorry, Mr. Chabon, but there is nothing “illegal” about Jews purchasing houses in a mostly Arab area, any more than there is anything wrong with African-Americans purchasing houses in a mostly white area. It’s called integration. Welcome to the 21st century, Michael Chabon. South African apartheid is gone and Arab apartheid deserves the same fate.

Chabon mentioned in the interview that he is co-editing a book of essays “marking 50 years of Israeli occupation.” Bookstores should place it on the fiction shelves. Israel stopped occupying the Palestinians back in 1995, when prime minister Yitzhak Rabin pulled Israel’s forces out of the cities where 98 percent of the Palestinians reside. It is only in the minds of purveyors of fiction such as Michael Chabon that Israel is still “occupying” them.

Chabon’s own essay in the book concerns one Sam Bahour, “a Palestinian-American businessman who moved to Ramallah to build the Palestinian economy in the wake of the Oslo peace accords, only to watch the Israeli occupation deepen around him.” Fascinating! Ramallah is the capital of the Palestinian Authority regime. There are no Israeli soldiers in Ramallah. Yet somehow Sam Bahour, in Ramallah, is “watching the Israeli occupation deepen around him.” Now that requires a powerful imagination indeed.

Michael Chabon is a talented novelist. Unfortunately, it seems that when the subject is Israel, he has trouble separating fiction from reality.

This article first appeared on JNS.org.

Peace treaties that don’t bring peace

My comments on a recent New York Times ad placed by the S. Daniel Abraham Center for Middle East Peace urging Israel to sign a peace treaty with the Palestinians.

Israelis of a certain age have a saying which translates from Hebrew as, “We’ve already seen that movie.” 

Read the full column at Peace treaties that don’t bring peace



 Well, that's what I have to say.Stephen M. Flatow

American historians show their true colors when Palestinians do the arresting

Where's the historian's outrage?

American college professors have now shown their true colors when it comes to Israel. Remember how 126 historians recently tried to get the American Historical Association (AHA) to condemn Israel for “interfering with the travel of students” by maintaining security checkpoints? Well, now it’s the Palestinian Authority (PA) that is setting up checkpoints to block teachers—and wouldn’t you know it, those angry historians have suddenly fallen silent.

The 126 radical historians presented their resolution at the AHA’s convention in Atlanta in January. The Gang of 126 claimed the students are sometimes delayed “15 minutes or more” at Israeli security checkpoints, and these delays supposedly are “impeding instruction at Palestinian institutions of higher learning.”

The real impediment to Palestinian education, however, is the behavior of the PA. More than 20,000 Palestinian public school teachers are striking because the PA has failed to implement a 2013 agreement between the PA and the Palestinian Teachers Union. The pay raises and promotions required by the agreement have never been put into effect.

The PA claims that it doesn’t have enough money to pay the teachers. Yet the PA has one of the largest per capita security forces in the world; in fact, more than half of all PA employees are in the security forces.

One of the tasks for which the PA needs such a large security force is—arresting teachers! Last week, the PA police arrested 20 teachers and two school principals for the “crime” of participating in a rally supporting the striking teachers.

I suppose that news won’t come as a surprise to anyone who reads, for example, the U.S. State Department’s annual report on human rights around the world. The most recent report states that under the PA, there are “restrictions on freedom of speech, press, and assembly.” There are “limits on freedom of association and movement.”

Now Haaretz reports that “the PA security services set up rings of checkpoints to prevent the teachers from attending a demonstration” in support of the strikers.

What? Checkpoints? Palestinians delayed? Education disrupted? Those 126 angry historians should be up in arms. And they would be, except for the inconvenient fact that it is the PA, not Israel, which is to blame for the checkpoints. And Israel’s critics are constitutionally incapable of ever criticizing the Palestinian leadership for anything it does. These educators did not protest on behalf of Palestinian university students because they care about them, they simply are against Israel’s existence. Shameful.

Read the column on line here at JNS.ORG.